Data breaches → Sephora
Was your data in the Sephora breach?
2017 · sephora.com.au · ~780,073 accounts exposedCritical severity · 9/10
Sephora (sephora.com.au) suffered a data breach in 2017 that exposed around 780,073 accounts. If you had an account, some of your personal data may be circulating in leaked databases. The fastest way to know is to check your own email — free, in about 30 seconds, no password required.
What happened
In approximately January 2017, the beauty store Sephora suffered a data breach. Impacting customers in South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, 780k unique email addresses were included in the breach alongside names, genders, dates of birth, ethnicities and other personal information.
Breach details sourced from Have I Been Pwned, the industry-standard breach database. Risk analysis by Nullivo.
What was exposed, and why it matters
Not all breaches carry the same risk — what matters is which fields leaked. Here is what the Sephora breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Special-category data under UK/EU GDPR. Exposure can lead to discrimination, extortion or targeted harassment, and cannot be undone.
Date of birth is a permanent identifier used to verify identity by phone. Combined with a name and address it is often enough to impersonate you.
Links this leak to your other accounts — a reused username lets anyone build a profile of you across platforms.
Puts you on spam and phishing lists, and confirms to attackers that you hold an account with this service — which makes impersonation emails more believable.
Also listed in this breach: Dates of birth, Email addresses, Ethnicities, Genders, Names, Physical attributes.
What to do if you were affected
These steps are ordered for this specific breach — the most urgent action given what leaked comes first.
- Sensitive personal characteristics: Under UK/EU GDPR you have a strong right to erasure here — exercise it with the service and with any site republishing the data.
- Dates of birth: Never confirm your date of birth to an inbound caller — hang up and dial the organisation back on a published number.
- Names and usernames: Search your usual username to see what else it exposes, and use distinct handles for sensitive accounts.
- Email addresses: Treat any message referencing this service with suspicion, and never act on links in unexpected emails.
- Check whether your own email appears in this breach — run a free scan to confirm before you spend time on the steps above.
This breach put your details on data-broker sites
Because Sephora exposed sensitive personal characteristics, this is one of the breaches that feeds people-search and data-broker sites. Those sites scrape leaked databases, combine them with public records, and republish the result as a searchable profile — which is how a single breach turns into a permanent public listing. Removal works, but brokers typically re-list within about four months, so it has to be repeated.
See our broker-by-broker removal guides →
How urgent is this now?
This breach is over 9 years old. Old credentials still cause harm — leaked passwords from a decade ago are still tried against new accounts every day.
Remember: a breach can't be "un-leaked" — once a database is out, it exists in countless copies. The goal is to make the leaked data useless: change what can be changed, lock down what can't, and remove what has been republished.
Frequently asked questions
What data was exposed in the Sephora breach?
The Sephora breach exposed sensitive personal characteristics, dates of birth, names and usernames, email addresses. Special-category data under UK/EU GDPR. Exposure can lead to discrimination, extortion or targeted harassment, and cannot be undone.
How many people were affected by the Sephora breach?
Around 780,073 accounts were exposed, making it a mid-sized breach.
What should I do if I had a Sephora account?
Under UK/EU GDPR you have a strong right to erasure here — exercise it with the service and with any site republishing the data. You can check whether your own email appears in this breach with a free Nullivo scan — no password required.
Breaches that exposed similar data
If the Sephora breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the Mate1.com breach? (2016, ~27,393,015 accounts)
- Was your data in the Zoosk (2020) breach? (2020, ~23,927,853 accounts)
- Was your data in the Master Deeds breach? (2017, ~2,257,930 accounts)
- Was your data in the COMELEC (Philippines Voters) breach? (2016, ~228,605 accounts)
- Was your data in the AlpineReplay breach? (2019, ~898,681 accounts)
- Was your data in the Beautiful People breach? (2015, ~1,100,089 accounts)